Prevalence and variation of underweight and overweight among ...

Figure 1: Prevalence of underweight and overweight among adult males and females100%90%80%70%60%50%40%30%20%10%64.70%Female Male TotalNote: AP classification is used.Variation by ethnicity14.2 17 15.564.1 64.421.2 18.9 20.1OverweightNormal weightUnderweightGiven the more vulnerable conditions of the EM, i.e. they usually live in remote mountainousareas in poor living conditions and poor accessibility to resources and social services, it isusually believed that underweight is more prevalent among the EM than the Kinh. Results fromthis study show that the prevalence of underweight among the EM is higher than the Kinh butthe difference is marginal and not significant: it is 21% among the EM vs. 20% among theKinh. On the other end, there is also no significant difference between the Kinh and the EM inthe prevalence of overweight.It is interesting to see that while no significant difference in prevalence of overweight andunderweight is found by gender or ethnicity, significant difference is found while looking atthe interaction between those two factors and it is mainly caused by the great gender differenceamong the EM. Specifically, there is no difference by gender in prevalence of overweight orunderweight among the Kinh population. Among the Kinh population, the prevalence ofunderweight is around 20% and the prevalence of overweight is around 15% for both malesand females. However, the prevalence of underweight is significantly higher among EMfemales compared to EM males (24.9% vs. 16.1%) while the prevalence of overweight issignificantly lower among EM females compared to EM males (10.5% vs. 18.5%). This pictureshows female EM is still a vulnerable population and more works are needed to close thosegender differences.6